Google and CIA Invest in a Minority Report-Like Technology That May Make Our World a Less Certain Place

8-27-2010 Global:

An article that appeared Wired Danger Room yesterday reveals that the CIA and Google are now in cahoots to invest in a new company called Recorded Future -- a real-life version of Minority Report, one that's all fact and no fantasy, It's purpose is to know the present and predict the future, totally.

I'm a longtime fan of Google and its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." And I applaud its founders and workers' commitment to "Do No Evil." I'm disappointed, therefore, that Google is treating such a potentially dangerous technology, on the scale contemplated by the CIA, as just another investment in IT done up in red, white, and blue bunting. These are smart people. They must know better. What motivates this scheme? According to writer Noah Schachtman, who broke the Recorded Future story on Wired,

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time -- and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents -- both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine "goes beyond search" by "looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events."

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online "momentum" for any given event.

"The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases," says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

The technology relies on Google's massive distributed computing power, its global networks, and the fact that nearly everyone on the net uses Google multiple times each day to store and share information to construct plausible pictures of what's happening anywhere in the world and more dangerously for civil liberties, economic markets, political diplomacy, and anything else that relies on a measure of uncertainty and privacy, what's likely to be happening in the world. To again quote Schachtman,

Recorded Future strips from web pages the people, places and activities they mention. The company examines when and where these events happened ("spatial and temporal analysis") and the tone of the document ("sentiment analysis"). Then it applies some artificial-intelligence algorithms to tease out connections between the players. Recorded Future maintains an index with more than 100 million events, hosted on Amazon.com servers. The analysis, however, is on the living web.
"We're right there as it happens," Ahlberg told Danger Room as he clicked through a demonstration. "We can assemble actual real-time dossiers on people."

Recorded Future, invested in by Google Ventures and the CIA's spooky In-Q-Tel VC subsidiary, posits greater certainty but its result could be exactly the opposite, a more uncertain future in which everyone will be gaming everyone else, on Google, Facebook, in books and periodicals, business articles, sports analyses, personal email, podcasts, political flyers -- every human statement and record -- throwing into doubt the veracity of any posting, comment, website, or archive. This happens already on online predictive-market simulations. And YouTube videos are scamming the public comprehension of complex events. Should Recorded Future succeed, it could turn the production and accumulation of information and knowledge into a never-ending race between the forecasters of the future and those who seek to assuage or delude them.

Conceivably in this future, CIA hitmen could be dispatched to eliminate a terrorist suspect even before the suspect knew what terror he or she is about to undertake. That was the premise for Minority Report (based on a story by Philip K. Dick), in which a future "Precrime" police unit fields SWAT teams that take out people before they commit crimes, based on the premonitions of three psychic mutants. Unfortunately, just as with Precrime's mutants, technology can go terribly wrong or be abused and the results can be deadly.

But even more profound, unintended consequences could follow if Recorded Future's predictions are released to the world -- or if they are not and are acted on by only a small cadre of specialists, to the exclusion of others. Either outcome could be catastrophic for financial markets, industrial competition, world economies, and the relations between nations, not to mention individuals' sense of personal security. In that future, an Iran or North Korea will fear not only that its every move can be a cause for war, but that every idea expressed or even just imputed from undisclosed tell-tales may lead to its destruction. The impulse to strike first will no doubt key a preemptive response on both sides of the equation.

Recorded Future's technological success could instigate deadly chess games at all levels between Knowers and The Known, who may often be one and the same, simultaneously. In this sense, Recorded Future technologically is an evolutionary step upward from the Total Information Awareness promoted by the CIA's General Poindexter (kept alive in concept by the CIA), but potentially a socially evolutionary step downward. Only some people will be granted its God's eye view of reality and insights to the future. On their beneficence or villainy could depend the fate of the world as we know it.

Ironically, Google's participation in this project could result in it debasing its own value as a carrier of information shared by others for purposes having nothing to do with the security of the American state, both its governmental wing and the industrial sector that affects national policymaking and, via outsourcing, its technological deployments.

For a fact, private corporations have been using systems like Recorded Future's for over a decade, constantly refining their predictive capabilities. But none has at its disposal the computing power or access to all the world's data that Google and the CIA have between them. Corporations and private investors that can wangle their way into the Company's good graces as collaborators and subcontractors could have a tremendous advantage over their competitors if they can gain access to Recorded Future, even in its infancy.

Schachtman's article doesn't go into great detail on the business relationship between Google and CIA or with their offspring, Recorded Future, or the missions that Recorded Future may be expected to undertake. And because of the shroud of national security that the CIA throws over every development, it's unlikely that anything short of a Congressional hearing will reveal more. However, one thing is certain: those who have a stake in the future -- all of us -- must develop a new awareness for predictive technology and how it can and will be used not only to describe the present but also to forecast the future and, in the process, remake it.

The flip side is that, were Recorded Future's power to become a public asset generally accessible to people around the world (with limitations on critical types of information, like market dynamics), it could be a boon to global awareness and the ability to solve crises like climate change and nuclear disarmament.

Robert David Steele, an intelligence community insider but not in the mainstream, is the author of The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political - A Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption, a comprehensive primer on "open source intelligence." He posits a world in which citizens, working openly with the tools and information available on the Internet and in other public sources -- this was before Google was going great guns -- can exceed the intelligence capability of the CIA many times over. What was missing, according to Steele, was geotagging of data so that it could be made relevant to problems needing solution, from local issues to global affairs. The New Craft is a striking exposition and a strong refutation of Recorded Future-like pipedreams. Given that Google is now mature and SRI's GeoWeb can provide the universal geotagging process, we might be on the verge of a situation-aware global populace. But is that likely with the CIA in charge? Steele has his doubts.

In his groundbreaking 1992 novel Snow Crash, futurist Neal Stephenson described a successor to the CIA, the CIC -- Central Intelligence Corporation -- a for-profit company that takes over the management role of what was once the U.S. Government, now defunct. It relies on a virtual-world simulacrum, "Earth," as a portal into the Metaverse, the entire collection of all digital knowledge and representations. (Another irony: Earth is a descendant of Google Earth which, according to one of its developers, Avi Bar-Zeev, was inspired by Stephenson's vision of Earth.)

Things go radically wrong in the already data-warped Metaverse and the material world it represents, not least because unsavory people gain access to Earth with its potential for revealing everything they need to know to create a Doomsday scenario. Stephenson's allegory takes some wild bounces, but its lesson for those of us living in the present -- now in the presence of a possible Earth -- is clear.

Now is the time for openness, transparency, and public discussion about what is being proposed via Recorded Future: the power to remake our future and our world, with unexpected consequences that even the most benign benefactors -- even the kind folks at Google -- had best take very, very seriously. This isn't just about the union of business or spycraft, it's existence itself that the digital alchemists are taking in hand. ..Source.. Bob Jacobson

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MT- Want A Job? Hand Over Your E-Mail Login

Sure, right, Bozeman here's my answer!
6-19-2009 Montana:

Bozeman, Montana Tells Applicants To Provide Facebook, Google "Usernames And Passwords," Which Some Find A Bit Too Invasive

(CBS) If you're planning to apply for a job with the city of Bozeman, Montana, be prepared to hand over much more than your references and résumé.

The Rocky Mountain city instructs all job applicants to divulge their usernames and passwords for "any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc."

"Before we offer people employment in a public trust position we have a responsibility to do a thorough background check," Chuck Winn, Bozeman's assistant city manager, told CBSNews.com in an interview on Thursday. "This is just a component of a thorough background check."

"Shame on us if there was information out there available about a person who applied for a job who was a child molester or had some sort of information out there on the Internet that kind of showed those propensities and we didn't look for it, we didn't ask, and we hired that person," Winn said. "In many ways we would have let the public down."

After CBS affiliate KBZK highlighted the requirement on Wednesday, a firestorm of sorts has erupted online: irate e-mail messages have jammed mailboxes in City Hall, snarky Twitter.com comments have poked fun at a place once awarded the sobriquet of "All-America City," and a poll indicates 98 percent of respondents believe the city's policy amounts to an "invasion of privacy."

In addition to the usual requests for a home address and Social Security number, Bozeman's one-page background check form asks for the account information for "current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships." It assures applicants that any information received "is confidential."

Winn said applicants are not required to divulge their social networking log-ins, but warned that there could be repercussions if they lie. "If you say 'I have no driving violation,' and then we run your driving record and it turns out you do, and through further questioning we find out you've been deceitful about it, than that would be cause (for firing)," he said. "That tells us a lot about that particular person. They lied to us and were deceitful."

Under the policy, which the city says has been in place for a few years, a police officer logs into and reviews the social networking sites of people applying for public safety (that is, police and fire) jobs. For other jobs, the city's human resources department will perform the investigation.

An attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco, questioned Bozeman's choice to ask for usernames and passwords.

"I think its indefensibly invasive and likely illegal as a violation of
the First Amendment rights of job applicants," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF attorney. "Essentially they're conditioning your application for employment on your waiving your First Amendment rights ... and risking the security of your information by requiring you to share your password with them... Where does it stop? How about a photocopy of your diary?"

One potential privacy concern is that accounts for Facebook and Google, among other sites, are used for more than just displaying photos, videos, and messages. They're also used for e-mail, meaning that a Bozeman investigator could review years of personal messages.

"I don't think the government can condition your application for employment on your giving up your First Amendment rights and your Fourth Amendment rights," Bankston said.

Another possible hitch: Some social networking sites flatly prohibit disclosure of passwords, so a job seeker who complied with Bozeman's request could lose his account. Facebook's terms of service, for instance, say: "You will not share your password (or) let anyone else access your account."

Bozeman's Winn said the city does not want to be the "taste police" and is focused on looking for evidence of illegal activity. "They can log in themselves," he said. "If not, they can show us what's on their face page. 'Yes, I have a face page but I don't want to show it to you.' That's a fine answer. We'll use other resources out there to do a through background check. We owe it to the public." ..Source.. by Declan McCullagh

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Constitutional interpretation and citizen rights

4-9-2009 National:

Normally it would not seem the United States Constitution and Lemuel Gulliver would have much in common, but this fictional character and our bedrock document of government have received similar treatment.

Just as our traveler, Gulliver, was a giant in the land of Lilliputians, so our Constitution is in our Republic. And, as Gulliver was restrained as he slept by tiny men to bend him to their own purposes, such has been the recent treatment of our founding document.

Jonathan Swift’s character in Gulliver was written as political and social satire and, while the context of the era may have lapsed, the messages still ring true.

In the annals of history, the United States Constitution and its framers loom as giants. Many of their interpreters are diminutive in comparison, but they seem forever busy turning the Constitution from a great shield for the citizen to a sword for the activist.

Jurists seeking to insert substantive due process into the document and let judges discover rights not written, but divined by their interpretation, threw the first silken cords. A case in 1967 supplied a fragment of language that serves as the jumping off point for this misapplied reasoning, as the Supreme Court quite reasonably struck down a law from the Jim Crow era outlawing marriage between different races as being antithetical to the clause guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Toward the end of the decision, the court added language that marriage was a substantive right.

(Posted by eAdvocate)

This implied that there were rights granted individuals beyond those named by the Constitution, which could be interpreted from a meaning given to the language of the document. This gave rise to future courts interpreting “shadow” rights that were often used as battering rams against social norms.

This interpretation of “shadow” rights most famously is found in the decision of Roe v. Wade, preventing the states from interposing legal barriers to abortion on the grounds that such action would violate the court’s discovery of a fundamental and substantive right to privacy in the Constitution.

This decision is often misunderstood to be about whether the Supreme Court views abortion as legal. The question actually is whether a right to privacy exists that can be interpreted to prevent the states from deciding if abortion should be legal or regulated within their individual boundaries.

Employing a visioning process that discovers intentions beyond the pen of the author, and elevates them to be substantive and fundamental, makes it nearly impossible for the states or the citizenry to affect their exercise.

This becomes important as we consider one of President Obama’s first judicial nominations.

David Hamilton presently is a trial court judge at the federal level whom the president wishes to elevate to the appellate court in Chicago. .Judge Hamilton’s interpretation of the right to privacy and substantive due process has led to him to declare unconstitutional a law to require convicted sex offenders to allow authorities access to their personal computers.

The New York Times noted that the judge, in his decision, felt that the amendment cut into the heart of a person’s right to privacy in his home. He added, “The ability of the individual to retreat into his home and therefore to be free from unreasonable intrusion by the government stands at the very core” of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.

This makes a jumble of whether a search is reasonable within the sanctity of one’s home, a possibility that clearly exists within the Constitution, by placing it in an almost subservient role to a right to privacy, which has only been interpreted to exist in the Constitution.

Such a view is troubling to those who believe the framers knew what they meant and were capable of deciding if a right to privacy was important enough to be written into the Constitution and placed upon the same level as the Bill of Rights’ prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.

I hope that those who treasure the genius of our Constitution do not sleep like Gulliver. ..News Source.. by Rick Wagner

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created a Surveillance Self-Defense site

3-4-2009 National:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created this Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate the American public about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States, providing the information and tools necessary to evaluate the threat of surveillance and take appropriate steps to defend against it.

Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) exists to answer two main questions: What can the government legally do to spy on your computer data and communications? And what can you legally do to protect yourself against such spying?

After an introductory discussion of how you should think about making security decisions — it's all about risk management — we'll be answering those two questions for three types of data:
First, we're going to talk about the threat to the data stored on your computer posed by searches and seizures by law enforcement, as well as subpoenas demanding your records.

Second, we're going to talk about the threat to your data on the wire — that is, your data as it's being transmitted — posed by wiretapping and other real-time surveillance of your telephone and Internet communications by law enforcement.

Third, we're going to describe the information about you that is stored by third parties like your phone company and your Internet service provider, and how law enforcement officials can get it.

In each of these three sections, we're going to give you practical advice about how to protect your private data against law enforcement agents.

In a fourth section, we'll also provide some basic information about the U.S. government's expanded legal authority when it comes to foreign intelligence and terrorism investigations.
Finally, we've collected several articles about specific defensive technologies that you can use to protect your privacy, which are linked to from the other sections or can be accessed individually.

So, for example, if you're only looking for information about how to securely delete your files, or how to use encryption to protect the privacy of your emails or instant messages, you can just directly visit that article. ..News Source.. by The SSD Project

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